Tight Tilts – Six straight games between the Capitals and the Red Wings have resulted in the two teams combining for four or fewer goals. Washington has won five of those six, and each team has authored a 1-0 home ice win during that span.

“I don’t know,” says Trotz. “When you think of Detroit, you always think of high scoring and Washington, you think of as pretty high scoring. I don’t know. It’s probably a mutual respect that you’ve got to play real sound defensively against both teams.

“Detroit is still a pretty high scoring team. They’ve got some guys that can really wheel and some young guys that can fly. They’ve got [ex-Cap Mike Green] on the back end who can generate [offense] from the back end, so I don’t know why the scores are down so much. Probably good goaltending.

“I know the one night that [Ovechkin] had [15] shots, [Wings goalie Petr] Mrazek was pretty darned good and [Braden Holtby] has been really good for us. I think it’s probably the goaltending aspect, and probably both teams really pride themselves on playing a 200-foot game.”

The Wings have a dynamo in Athanasiou, a guy with explosive speed and the hands to finish. In 38 games, he has given them 11 goals among 16 points. Coach Jeff Blashill sees Athanasiou as being capable of much more, which is why he stresses good habits to the 22-year-old daily.

“I’ve said this lots,” Blashill said this morning at Verizon Center, as the Wings prepped for the evening game against the Washington Capitals (7, FSD). “When he is engaged -- and engaged, generally, for him, means skating and winning battles -- when he skates and wins battles and stops on pucks, he is an excellent hockey player.

“He’s got to make sure, on a consistent basis, he does that. That, to me, is the great separator of OK and good players to great players, that you do it on a consistent basis, night in and night out. And especially, the more attention you draw, the more you are able to do it, defines a great player in this league.”

It’s become clear how impactful Mantha can be with his size, too. There’s no shortage of examples of how he can use his strength, either. Looking through his highlight reel, you’ll see him win puck battles, force his way into space and power his way to rebounds. It wasn’t just about tacking on pounds of muscle, however.

“Because of how good he was, he could play the game standing still and still have lots of success, not necessarily having to move his feet all the time before he came into pro hockey,” Blashill explained. “That’s because he had a skill package that’s a lot better than the people he was playing against.”

At every other level, his style of play worked wonders. He led the QMJHL in goals in 2012-13 as a sophomore player, then topped that feat with a monster 57-goal, 120-point season that led him to QMJHL MVP and CHL Player of the Year honors. In the AHL, he continued to be dominant, even as a young gun. He opened with a 15-goal, 33-point rookie season and scored 20 goals and 45 points in his second season. But for Mantha to become a consistent NHL scorer, he needed all aspects of his game working at once. That’s where Mantha’s dedication to using his skating ability in unison with his offensive gifts has really helped.

“When he skates, he’s an elite player,” Blashill said. “He’s a big body with really good hands and really good offensive sense. When he skates with the puck, he’s hard to handle, hard to handle on rushes, he’s hard to handle in the offensive zone. He’s got an excellent shot. So he really creates a lot of space for himself.”

Five Thirty-Eight's Neil Paine examines the "crumbling" of the "Red Wings' empire" from a statistical standpoint, and if there is anything the Red Wings truly screwed up along the way from a contender to a bubble team, it's pretty obvious: Detroit never meaningfully replaced Brian Rafalski or Nicklas Lidstrom:

On April Fools’ Day in 1990, the Detroit Red Wings and Philadelphia Flyers skated for the final game of the season at The Spectrum in south Philly. Captain Steve Yzerman banged home a goal late in the third period to earn the Wings a 3-3 tie, ending Detroit’s campaign with 70 points and a last-place finish in the Norris Division. Soon after, the 1989-90 Red Wings cleaned out their lockers and parted ways for the summer.

In the nearly 10,000 days since then, Detroit has played 2,035 regular-season games and employed 246 players. It’s gone through three captains, four general managers and six head coaches. But the one constant throughout the last 25 full seasons of Red Wings hockey has been extra action in the spring — and often deep into the summer. Detroit hasn’t missed the postseason since that April day in 1990, a mind-boggling run that beats any playoff streak outside of hockey1 and is tied for the third longest in NHL history. (That it has come partially during the NHL’s salary-cap era is especially impressive.)

But it could all come screeching to a halt this season. With a 22-21-10 record, Detroit currently occupies last place in the Atlantic Division, five points out of the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot with seven teams ahead of them. According to Hockey-Reference.com’s playoff simulator, the Red Wings have just a 7 percent probability of continuing their run for a 26th straight postseason. Every streak has to end eventually, but how did Detroit go wrong after so many years of success?

Heeter shows a 7-2-0 record in nine games with the Griffins this season. If he met the 900 minutes requirement, Heeter’s 2.11 goals against average would place third in the AHL and his 0.932 save percentage would lead the league. The 6-foot-4 netminder recorded his first shutout in a Griffins uniform when he turned aside 35 shots in a 5-0 victory against Cleveland on Jan. 21.

Rattling off eight consecutive victories to begin the 2016-17 campaign in Toledo, Heeter is 10-1-0 in 11 games with the Walleye, totaling a 3.03 GAA and a 0.898 save percentage.

The Detroit Red Wings will play a team that is nothing less than "scary good" in the Washington Capitals this evening (7 PM EST on FSD/CSN Washington/97.1 FM). If their 37-11-and-6 record isn't intimidating enough, the Capitals are coming off a pair of 5-0 shutout wins (over Los Angeles and Carolina, respectively), they've won 8 of their past 10 games, and they ended 2016 on a 9-game winning streak.

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